Mirrored Scars
by infinite eternity
Summary: The battle is never-ending, an endless war with small triumphs but never a true victory. Until Bel wins—permanently. [Revamped version of "Red". Very infrequent updates.]
1. Bel

"I hate you."

Rasiel glared. "I hate you more _._ "

"Mother thinks you're a demon."

"Father doesn't even _care_ about you."

Bel flinched. "Only 'cause you were born first!"

"So _I'm_ the heir," Rasiel drawled. He tilted his head. "And you're nothing but a spare."

A tremor lanced through Bel's hands and he bared his teeth, glaring at Rasiel through his bangs. "Shut up."

Rasiel ran a musing finger along the edge of his tiara. "When I'm king, even Mother will forget about you. I'll have you sent off to Blackworth to mine coal with the commoners. Your skin will turn grey, they say, and your hair too. There's nothing royal about—"

"Shut up!" Rasiel smiled pleasantly. "Shut up, shut up, _shut up!_ " Bel tackled him to the ground, barely registering his own movements as they thrashed in a tangle of limbs and profanity. Something squelched under his nails. He howled incoherently at Rasiel's bloody face, tearing and scraping and digging into his eyes. Servants clamored around them as two guards dragged Bel off of his brother. He hissed and cursed and spat in their stoic faces until they slammed his head against the cold stone floor and the world went black.

/\ o \/ o /\ o \/ o /\

"Belphegor, this behavior can no longer be tolerated." Bel scowled. Rasiel shifted his weight. Bel glanced at him, unnerved by his unusual silence and the black blindfold hiding his eyes. "Your brother was nearly rendered blind by your attack. Fortunately for you, Doctor Meade was able to heal his eyes. However…"

The king reached out and tugged away the blindfold, baring a tangle of jagged red scars. Rasiel's ice-blue eyes were like glittering diamonds in the middle of an inferno, cold with rage and hatred. Bel mirrored his glare.

"You're even uglier than before," he muttered.

" _Silence_." Anger twisting his noble features, the king struck the side of Bel's head. Bel gasped and recoiled, clutching at his temple. Fresh blood seeped from the half-healed injury as shock froze his voice. "I will not repeat myself, Belphegor. Before this incident, Isalya had convinced me that the conflicts between the two of you were merely brotherly disputes. Now, though, one of these 'brotherly disputes' has injured and permanently scarred the crown prince.

"I have decided upon a rather fitting punishment for you." The king's sneer smoothed as Bel struggled back into a kneeling position. "Doctor Meade will carve scars identical to Rasiel's into your face, so that you carry the same shame that your brother will for the rest of your lives."

There was no moment of disbelief. Bel saw Rasiel's smirk in edge of his vision, and his mind snapped into startling clarity.

He thought about killing them, snatching the king's precious crown from his head and pressing it against his throat until he suffocated. He thought about tearing out Rasiel's eyes for real, blinding him forever. He thought about killing them all and running away to some godforsaken country in Asia with filthy farmers and no proper royal family and plebeians who had never heard of Prince Belphegor of Ardor.

No, he decided. Not today. He would take these scars, receive them with the grace befitting of a prince even if he had to watch Doctor Meade carve them into his face with his eyes wide open. And they would serve as a reminder of everything Rasiel was, feeding the fire of bitterness inside him until the volcano could finally erupt.

/\ o \/ o /\ o \/ o /\

If there were one thing that the two brothers agreed on, it would be that they both hated their new haircuts. The king had declared it unseemly for the princes to be seen in public with such ghastly scars, and his glare had made it clear there was no room for argument. Bel had mumbled to himself that it was because of the king that Bel had the scars in the first place, and received another cuff on the head for the comment.

"Ow—!"

"Watch it, stupid!"

"You're stupid, stupid. I can't _watch_ anything with these wretched bangs." Bel stuck out his foot in Rasiel's approximate direction and smirked at the loud _thud_ , which was followed by a string of curses that one would never expect to leave a prince's mouth.

"Bastard," Rasiel spat. His clothing rustled as he, presumably, picked himself up off the ground.

"We're twins, stupid."

"Shut up, stupid."

Bel adapted quickly to the inconvenient bangs, and before long he could pin the castle servants to the wall as neatly as before. The maids were his favorite toys; their high-pitched shrieks made him giggle. They like playing with him too, he thought.

His relationship with Rasiel had only grown worse after the incident, despite the king's constant warnings and harsh punishments. Most of their interactions ended in blood—throwing rocks, throwing boulders. The battle was never-ending, an endless war with small triumphs but no true victory. But one day, Bel won permanently.


	2. Always

A flurry of daggers flew through the air, tightly spaced but spread far enough apart to prevent Bel from dodging out of the way. He leapt up to avoid the ones near his feet and swept the rest aside with a blade of his own. Rasiel flexed his fingers, pulling the knives back towards himself. Bel flung a knife at the retracting blades and sheared a few of them from their strings. He dashed forwards as the knives fell to the ground, and the game was on.

Everything was moving almost too fast for him to follow. His eyes darted up and around and back at Rasiel as his body struggled to block, dodge, jump, run, duck… He knew that if he slowed down or slipped up even once, Rasiel would win.

Bel slashed his way through the web of knives and strings to the smirking spider in the middle. Sidestepping Rasiel's side kick, Bel swiped a fallen dagger from the grass and jabbed it through a tiny opening in his guard—Rasiel flung himself downwards, reaching for the back of Bel's knees in an attempt to unbalance him. Bel kicked him hard in the face. A satisfying _crunch_ sounded as blood dripped down Rasiel's chin and stained the grass. He swore and spit a tooth out of his mouth, along with a glob of blood. His nose was crushed.

Bel made the mistake of throwing his head back in laughter—Rasiel slammed a knife-hand strike against the inside of his thigh, hitting Bel's femoral artery. He collapsed on top of Rasiel. The two brothers grappled at each other, throwing close-range punches and knee strikes with glaringly poor technique.

The blade of a discarded dagger ripped through the back of Bel's shirt and sliced a shallow cut in his skin. Grinning, he pulled it out from under him. Rasiel tried to knock it from his grasp, but Bel snickered through his teeth and drove the knife straight through his hand.

Rasiel howled. "Fuck!"

"Oops." Bel pinned him to the ground, giggles escaping his mouth. He swept the bangs from both of their faces to reveal faded red scars. "Look, brother," he crowed, "we match!"

Rasiel, struggling to breathe and clutching at his mangled hand, still managed to give him a piercing glare. The scars around his eyes stood in stark contrast to his unblemished cheeks. Bel reached out—Rasiel tried to punch him, screaming when Bel twisted the blade in his hand—and laid a hand on Rasiel's cheek. Such a beautiful alabaster canvas.

Bel set his knife gently against the side of Rasiel's face and traced an invisible line down to his chin. A warning of what was to come. Rasiel shifted anxiously underneath him, ragged breaths escaping his mouth. Bel pictured lines of red seeping blood across his pale skin.

"Bel."

He turned and looked at her, his lovely sister, Azrael with her soft voice and gentle eyes and power greater than anyone else's in the entire kingdom. He hated her, but they were the same in the end, veins hot with the same burning noble blood, so he loved her—at times, he wished he could bring himself to kill her.

He said, "I'm going to kill him." A challenge.

Azrael tilted her head, blond tresses sliding silkily over her shoulder. "No, you aren't."

"Yes, I am!" Bel stabbed his knife through Rasiel's other hand to pin him down and stood up, ignoring his howls. "You can't stop me."

"Can't I?" Azrael stepped out from the shadow of the wall, the sunlight illuminating her beautiful features: porcelain skin, the envy of every tittering noblewoman; camellia-pink lips frozen in a knowing smile; crystal eyes hiding an ocean of dark secrets…

Bel despised his own helplessness in the face of her—was it beauty? Charm? Familial love? He stifled a giggle. No, certainly not that. He couldn't fathom what it was that prevented him from lifting his hand and embedding a knife in her heart. But it didn't matter.

"Nope," Bel declared, meeting her gaze with a smirk. "I may not be able to kill you, but you can't stop me from killing _him_!" Satisfied with this defiant announcement, he turned his back on Azrael and idly kicked at his brother's twitching body. He twirled his knife around his fingers, humming a cheerful, nonsensical tune.

Azrael only smiled. "We'll see."

"You…"

Bel looked down to see Rasiel glaring at him through a freshly blackened eye. "Hm?" he prompted.

"You bastard," Rasiel gasped out. "I'm going to fucking kill you—"

"Language, Rasiel."

"Shut up, idiot sister." After a moment, Bel added, "You too, idiot brother. In case you've forgotten, we're twins."

Azrael's smile never faltered.

Realizing that he'd gotten sidetracked, Bel returned to perusing Rasiel's face. Somehow, he no longer felt like carving the intricate designs he'd imagined. "Idiot sister," he called, frowning, "you've ruined my fun."

"Apologies," Azrael murmured, looking entirely too remorseful for him to believe it.

Bel huffed and spun the knife twice before driving into Rasiel's shoulder. Muscle tissue squelched and bones squeaked. Rasiel groaned, head lolling to the side. "Oops!" Bel cried. "I already injured you too much; you aren't screaming." Disappointed, he stabbed Rasiel in the chest, then through the stomach a few times for good measure. He gave his brother one final kick to the temple and stood.

Azrael was gone.


End file.
